The LEDs Behind Rotolight...

We are moving into an era when technology enables us to streamline our workflow more than ever before and users are looking to utilise equipment that is portable, versatile and energy efficient without undermining the quality of the end product, writes Rotolight’s Alex H-French.

LED Lighting is increasingly more popular as technology advances and its unique features shine through. Rotolight have developed their systems with the user in mind and manufacture totally flicker-free, continuous lighting that offers all these benefits, plus excellent colour reproduction and revolutionary wireless technology.
Rotolight have worked tirelessly to develop the phosphor colour chemistry of its LEDs, featuring best in class technology in order to reproduce accurate colour temperature.
Chris Chisnall, head of lighting for ITV recently said of the Rotolight ANOVA Bi Colour V2: "The ANOVAs make balancing easy being able to match the prevailing colour temperature perfectly without having to resort to a selection of gels." Used as a fill light on set of Coronation Street and as a key/fill light on location of BBC’s BAFTA winning ‘In the Flesh’, the Rotolight ANOVA V2 offers a market leading overall CRI=95 and virtually perfect skin tone reproduction of R15 CRI=98!
Dale McCready, DoP (Merlin, Atlantis, Dr. Who) on 'In the flesh' recently explained: "The lamp’s colour is good enough that there’s no need to think about it as a separate tool, it’s the go to lamp for nearly every setup." Cinematographers such as Ross Anderson (BBC, Universal Music, Disney) echoed McCready’s sentiments: "I’m very particular about the lights I use on talent, they have to be soft and wrapping and have a decent CRI. The ANOVAs and Rotolight’s RL48 have this kind of quality of light."
The Rotolight RL48-B ring light features the same LED technology with an overall CRI=91 and emits a 100W equivalent daylight output that can be accurately calibrated. Tailored for the 'run & gun' video and photography markets, the RL48 was recently used on Tom Hanks’ latest, 'Captain Phillips'. Lighting Gaffer Harry Wiggins (Hurt Locker, Iron Lady) explains: "Perfectly-sized and with a built-in gel kit, it was my get out of jail card; neat, punchy and saved time by the bucket load. It was small enough to hide behind an existing fitting to boost it or powerful enough to key on its own."
The size of LEDs and lack of residual heat enables manufacturers to produce compact units that are powerful enough to be used as a soft key or fill light and offer a source of light in small studios, on location or hard to light situations without huge AirCon bills! Whether it’s battery powered via 3 x AAs in the RL48 (lasts for four hours), or V-lock battery on the ANOVA as standard, LEDs offer a fantastic power efficient light source for all location and studio lighting.
"The ability to run off batteries, even in the studio, make them (ANOVA) a dream for fast rigging in awkward areas of the set where we would usually have to hide cables. These lights really speed up shooting for us and have become the fill lights of choice in the Rovers," said Chris Chisnall, Coronation St.
Rotolight have deliberately tried to think 'outside the box' and come up with innovative, unique technologies to ease future workflows and inspire filmmakers. The Rotolight Magic Eye lighting control APP for iPad and iPhone allows wireless remote control of 256 Rotolight ANOVA lights plus 3rd party DMX lights as well, and provides users with a familiar DMX style lighting console, Scene Memory and Transition Playlist. The multi-award winning app. changes the way users work. Ross Anderson said: "The iPhone app was something I’ve never seen before, it was really quite simple to use and certainly shows the way all this technology is heading. It meant we could stop using traditional DMX boards, controllers and wires."
Never before has our industry faced such challenges: convergence, up-scaling, new delivery platforms, mobile, online, broadcast, VOD. However, common fundamentals are still based around the quality of content production, and as 4K rolls out, the quality of lighting becomes ever more important. Rotolight foresees wireless technology and LED lighting becoming the key to unlocking further opportunities in the process of production, and enabling users to focus on the delivery of high quality results.

The article is also available to read online.

(IT/CD)